Tag: political religion

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When real religion becomes a secular religion

The total confusion of “secular” and “religious” religions becomes most obvious when someone criticizes the very idea of secularism (in French, “laïcité“) for its religious bias. As an article on Political Theology suggests, even the Notre Dame of Paris can be called a “secular cathedral“, inasmuch as it symbolizes a sort of “cultural Christianity” that nevertheless remains a religious idea, despite being non-religious. In other words, the cathedral, which – as the less educated observer would think – is an unquestionably religious symbol is not really a religious symbol, but a symbol of something else (a certain cultural and political ideology), while this ideology is indeed religious in the sense of being pro-Catholic. It is indeed impossible to decide what the real problem of the author is: is it that religion thus becomes secular, or that secularism becomes religious? We have all heard the same stories about “politicization” as a pathology of religion, and “religionization” as a pathology of politics. But when both are invoked in the same breath, the two suspicions seem to cancel each other out. If a religion becomes secular by becoming political, but the secular in turn becomes religious by the very same act, the only logical conclusion is that the main objection against this religion is that it remains just as religious as it was before. Which is not only paradoxical to the point of being non-sensical, but also historically absurd. Words like “catho-laïcité” may sound well for an ear trained on postmodern oxymorons, but no Catholic will ever forget how laicism emerged as a primarily anti-Catholic ideology. The confiscation of Church property during the French Revolution, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790, the de-Christianization campaign, the 1905 law on the separation of the churches and the state, and all similar events are very hard to see as a clandestine cooperation between the French Republic and the Catholic Church; or if it was, it was the most well-hidden conspiracy in the history of church-state relations.

The fact that laicism has since become more tempered and does not nowadays exclude cultural references to the Catholic tradition only proves that religion, culture, and politics are not distinct fields that can be hermetically separated. But this is no new revelation, and those who still think that it is something outrageous should first explain why “cultural Christianity” – which may well be a secular idea – is to be rejected not because it is secular but because it is a religious one.

Feu dans la charpente de Notre Dame photographié depuis le square René Vivani à 19 h 51. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Incendie_Notre_Dame_de_Paris.jpg)

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“Good” and “bad” political religions

This week I attended an extremely interesting conference in Tilburg on the “liquid presence of religion in the public square“. The wording may be a little awkward for those who are not familiar with that kind of postmodern verbal acrobatics, but the strange word “liquidity” only wants to emphasize that the boundaries between religion and other institutional spheres such as politics, economy, education, care, and the arts are much less obvious than we usually suppose and need a thourough revision. All this fits well into my own scheme of problematizing the religious-secular distinction, even if by a different terminology.

My presentation – with all primitivity of its title – was about the strange fact that “political religion” has always been used both as a positive and a negative word, regardless of the fact whether an already existing religion was used (or abused) for political purposes, or a political ideology became a (good or bad) substitute for religion. Which means that the main dividing line is not between “real” or “explicit” religion(s) on the one hand and “quasi” or “implicit” ones on the other, but between different concepts of the relationship between the individual and the community, either in a religious or in a political context. (Suggesting, of course, that these are two contexts and not one, which is what I most strongly oppose.)

I was also honored that one of the participants of our panel quoted my book, although he might not have known in advance I’d be there. It was thus a very flattering experience, and questions from the audience were also to the point. Someone asked me about the relationship between political theology (in the Schmittian sense) and political religion, to which I could reply that Schmitt was just as confused about the two types of political theology (explicit and analogous) as all those who wrote about political religion in a broader sense. (This is what my conceptual-historical analysis also aimed to demonstrate: that the early modern notion of religio politica contained the same good/bad ambiguity as the later versions of religion politique, political religion, or religioni della politica.)

Another question about the distinction of “political” and “civil” religion also touched on a very important issue, even though my response could only be that this was not a theoretical distinction. The only reason why some authors distinguish the two is that they try to avoid the conflation of totalitarian and democratic ideologies and practices under the same label. Yet this is not an issue of definitions (civil religion, after all, is just as political as a political religion) but an issue of ideological commitment. “Political religion” and “civil religion” are both linguistic constructions that do not describe reality as such, but tools to present and defend certain positions in a debate.

In any case, it was a great experience to be part of a discussion that was at last about the only important question of our time.

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“Secular Religions” after a year

Or why it is so hopeless to change people’s minds on “religion”

This day marks the first anniversary of the publication of this book:

It is currently available in about 130 libraries, mainly in Europe and the US, and at least the Introduction can be read for free on academia.edu.

There is no reason to celebrate, though, for the main experience of this past year was that practically no one could be convinced of the core message of the book. No matter how many examples were presented that undermined the whole distinction of the secular and the religious, or how all definitional attemps of religion were pulled into doubt, the overall reaction was always the well-known commonplace “Oh, this can’t be true, there MUST be a difference!”

It’s not that I’m surprised, of course. “Religion” has always been what an educated German would call a Kampfbegriff, a word that does not describe a thing but defend a position in a debate. Now since the debate between those who call themselves “religious” and “secular” is far from over, it would be futile to expect that any of them will change their mind because of contrary examples and theoretical arguments. After all, the belief in the existence of “religion” is itself a belief. And not even the least dogmatic one.

(Hm, maybe I should start making TikTok videos instead.)

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A brief conceptual history of “political religion”

A paper of mine – written almost in the form of an encyclopaedia entry – was finally published a couple of weeks ago in the 2021-22 (!) yearbook of Politica e religione at Trento University, Italy. (You know how academic publishing works nowadays.) It is about the concept of “political religion” and yes, it is intended to be a gap filler. I’ve read many things about political religion and was quite amazed how many misconceptions are confidently repeated in the literature, or how many authors are still unaware of some of the basic facts of the history of this term.

I also make some irreverent remarks about great names such as Emilio Gentile, the leading theoretician of… well, this is exactly the problem, for Gentile – in his otherwise thoroughly informative works – remains just as confused about the terminology as anyone else. Sometimes we hear about the “sacralization of politics”, sometimes about the “religions of politics”, then about “politics as religion”, while all these are at the same time categorized either as secular religions, or real ones, or not religions at all.

But see more about those in the paper: https://teseo.unitn.it/politica-e-religione/article/view/3149/3716

BTW, the whole issue of this yearbook, the main topic of which is “civil theology” is extremely interesting!

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“A kind of political religion”

Speaking of the French Revolution, it is somewhat odd that it was not the altars of the Fatherland, the cult of the Nation, or the revolutionary oaths and feasts that reminded Condorcet of a political religion, but the way the Constitution was treated by public education plans. The word was mentioned twice in his Cinq memoires sur l’instruction publique (1791). The first passage gives some vague criteria for the religious analogy:

“It has been said that the teaching of the constitution of each country should be part of national education there. This is true, no doubt, if we speak of it as a fact; if we just explain it and expound it; if, in teaching it, we limit ourselves to saying: This is the constitution established in the state and to which all citizens owe obedience. But if we say that it must be taught as a doctrine conforming to the principles of universal reason, or excite in its favor a blind enthusiasm which renders citizens incapable of judge her; if they are told: This is what you must worship and believe, then it is a kind of political religion that we want to create; it’s a chain that we prepare for the spirits, and we violate freedom in its most sacred rights, under the pretext of learning to cherish it. The goal of instruction is not to make men admire legislation ready-made, but to enable them to appreciate and correct it.”

The second passage is more of a historical argument:

“Let the example of England become a lesson for other peoples: there, a superstitious respect for the constitution or for certain laws to which they attribute national prosperity, a servile worship for a few maxims devoted to the interest of the rich and powerful classes are part of education, they are maintained by those who long for fortune or power, they have become a kind of political religion which makes it almost impossible to make progress towards perfecting the constitution and laws.”

In other words, the first modern suspect for being a “political religion” was something as apparently harmless as a sort of constitutionalism or legal traditionalism. This line of argument was not even rediscovered until the 20th century. Condorcet’s immediate posterity was more concerned with another “religious” threat: that of democracy. But more on that next time.

Condorcet
Condorcet Marie

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The advantage of using bad words

As it has by now become clear, words like “political theology”, “political religion”, and “secular religion” are all problematic in one way or another. (And I could name a few more.) The whole conceptual chaos surrounding such terms is no accident, however. It all follows from the authors’ inability to define religion, and thereby their similar inability to say what secular is. This is why almost everyone relies on their own favorite formula, and then go into long and complicated explanations on how something that’s religious is at the same time secular, and vice versa.

There are nevertheless two advantages of this mishmash. The first is that it calls attention to the irreparable vagueness of the concept of religion. (With which I will deal later.) The second is that it teaches something important about modern ideologies. Namely, that there is always some absolute at the heart of all ideologies. I would not call it “religious”, of course. “Religious”, as I said many times, obfuscates more than it clarifies. But I would be happy to see ideologues embarrassed by their own inability to tell the difference between “religious” and “secular” absolutes.